Appalachian Grandpa- The Bone Collector- Part 2

Part 1-https://vocal.media/horror/appalachian-grandpa-the-bone-collector-part-1

The three of us sat on the back porch, Grandpa and Glimmer seeming to hear every muffled crash from the woods. I could hear them too, and whatever it was sounded like a rhinoceros blundering around out there. I couldn't hear much, not nearly as much as they could, but the fact that I could hear anything was alarming.

If I could hear this creature, then it must be closer than I thought.

Glimmer sniffed at the bottle we had offered her and wrinkled her nose. Grandpa was drinking from his, but it was mechanical. He wasn't enjoying it, wasn't in his element as he normally was when we sat out on the porch at night. I took a sip of my own, enjoying the seasonal ale as much as I could, as Glimmer filled us in on what had happened.

"Are you telling me that this all started because the city council decided to break ground on a new dump?" Grandpa asked.

"Your town has decided that the old dump wasn't good enough anymore and, in their infinite wisdom, decided to clear out an old gravel pit so it could dump its trash there."

Grandpa rolled his eyes and let the bottle sweat against his hand, "That sounds like our mayor. Anything to keep the rabble happy. Who cares if a few hundred of his constituents get hollowed out by the Bone Collector, so long as those left behind have a place to put their trash."

"Indeed. The forethought of you humans is quite impressive sometimes. What do you intend to do about this Bone Collector, Fisher?"

"What else?" Grandpa asked, "Seal it up again until someone inevitably frees it."

"Why not just seal it up somewhere where no one would find it again?" I asked, thinking of a spot but knowing that Grandpa wouldn't like it.

Glimmer and Grandpa looked at me for a moment before Glimmer fixed her pointy teeth into a wide smile, "I see he got more than your looks, Fisher. Where would you suggest?"

I looked at Grandpa, and he seemed to understand what I was thinking.

"We could lure him to the stream where you cleansed me after the bottle tree. If we seal him in there, the waters will keep him from coming back, won't they?" I asked, suddenly unsure.

Grandpa scratched his chin, looking unsure, but finally nodded, "Yeah, yeah, they might. That's a long trip with that thing after us, though. I'm not sure we could outrun it for that long."

"Leave that to me," Glimmer said, "This Bone Creature is nothing. I will lead him on a merry chase and give you two the time you need to set up."

"There will certainly be a lot of setup, too," Grandpa said, looking away into the woods.

The three of us sat there for quite some time, talking about what to do and making our plans. It was decided that if we could draw the Bone Collector into the stream, we could seal him into the clay after it had been properly blessed by Grandpa. Then, it would lay trapped there until some loggers or developers made their way deep enough into the woods to disturb it.

Grandpa hoped that would be long after his death.

I prayed it would be longer than that.

"And you can stop him this time?" Glimmer asked.

Grandpa nodded, but I didn't like the way she asked it. She sounded as if she were asking if he were capable, perhaps thinking Gramps was too old. To my surprise, however, Grandpa looked scared. Not scared of the creature, and not scared he might fail either. He seemed scared that Glimmer would reveal something he'd rather stay hidden.

"I will be fine," he said tersely, cutting her off and leaving no question that the subject was closed, "These old bones are more than capable of putting something like him to rest."

He got up then, deciding to take his old bones to bed as he excused himself. He left his beer in the cupholder, the only one I had ever seen him leave unbroken. The sight of that bottle unnerved me, and I think Glimmer recognized it too. She watched him go sadly and almost seemed to want to go after him.

"I never meant to shame him," She said quietly, looking after Grandad with a surprising amount of regret, "I simply wanted to be sure that he was capable this time."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, "Grandpa is older and wiser than he was in his youth, so it should be even easier for him to conquer the Bone Collector than it was the first time."

"That may be true," she agreed, "but your grandfather didn't conquer the Bone Collector when they first met."

It was the last thing I had expected her to say.

"Wait, no, Grandad said he was the one who sealed the Bone Collector away last time he was disturbed."

Glimmer sat back in the chair, sprawling like a cat, as she contemplated her next words. I hadn't known her long, but she really didn't seem the type to mince words. Maybe her people were always so forward, but nothing seemed to hold her back. To see her unsure now was a little scary.

"Has Fisher truly never told you about his first encounter with the Bone Collector? He tells you everything else; I wonder why this is something he won't talk about?"

"It's not the only thing," I admitted, looking away as a bat clicked overhead, "I know now that Grandpa has secrets. Before this year, I never knew much of anything about him; certainly nothing about this secret world he belongs to. It's funny, but I feel like I know him better now than I have at any other point in my life. Even so, I know there are things he won't talk about, CAN'T talk about, and that's okay. One day, he'll trust me enough to talk about it."

She surprised me again when her laughter cut across the thrum of the crickets.

I was startled by it but not unnerved by it.

With the moon winking off her pale skin, she really was quite beautiful.

"I love how serious you humans get sometimes. If Fisher didn't tell you, it's probably because he's still ashamed of what happened that night. He needn't be, though. It really wasn't any fault of his. He was little more than a child when he was called to help, and his failure was expected. It was brave of him to try, but he was out of his league."

I glanced over my shoulder to the dark house, wondering if it was right to ask her? This, like most stories, was Grandpa's story to tell, and he would tell it in his own time. This story, though, could help me tomorrow if Grandpa and I were going to seal this creature away. I still wasn't sure if I truly believed in all of this mystic stuff, but I believed in the thing I had seen yesterday. If I went against it without knowing what it was fully, Grandpa or I could end up dead.

"Will you tell me the story?" I asked, "Can you tell me the story?"

Glimmer shrugged, "I will tell you what I can. I wasn't there. I was just a child myself, but I remember what Fisher told me."

Glimmer pulled her legs up to her chest, her eyes looking back through the years as she remembered a time when a friend had asked her for help.

"Fisher had been spending a lot more time in the woods. He had recently lost his friends and was looking for some way to escape that guilt. He had never left the woods, though, and the years since we'd met on the river bank were full of time spent together. The deaths of his friends at the hands of the strange lights had reignited his interest in the Craft his Grandmother had been teaching him, and I helped him where I could. He was progressing well, making a name for himself in the region, which was likely what had drawn the town man to seek him out."

She took a pull from the bottle, making a face as she wet her pipes.

"So, when he came to me one afternoon and asked me if I knew about the Bone Collector, I was curious to know why? He said that recently, the towns graveyard had sustained some damage, and something tht had been sealed there had escaped. The man had some idea about what had been sealed up in that old church yard, and he knew that Fisher's grandmother had known even more. He knew she had passed, but that she had taught him her ways and hoped that maybe she had taught him how to put the creature back to sleep. Fisher had read about the creature and what would need to be done to put it away again, but he thought I might know other things and hoped those things would help him. I told him what I knew, which wasn't much, and wished him luck when he went to fight it. I told my father about it when I got home, and he doubted I would ever see Fisher again. My father knew much of the Bone Collector, a creature that even WE fear, and told me that only a few humans had ever managed to put the collector down again after it had been disturbed. I was worried for Ficher, but all I could do was hope that he would be okay."

I nodded. Grandpa had said something similar. Grandpa could say what he liked, but he was still afraid that he couldn't do it. I had worried that it was because he was much older now, but maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe he was afraid that he couldn't do it because he had never accomplished anything like it in his life?

"When Fisher came back, I was overjoyed. I had thought I might never see him again. I just knew that the Bone Collector had added him to his collection, and when he called me one night just like he always had, I couldn't believe my ears. Fisher, however, had changed. He was quiet, he didn't smile like the boy I had known before, and he said he'd only come to say goodbye. They were telling people to go to war in a foreign place, and he was going to fight. I asked if this had something to do with the battle against the Bone Collector, but he wouldn't tell me much. He would say that if the Snake Handler hadn't arrived, he would have been dead for sure. I didn't know who this "snake handler" was, but I find it unlikely that he'll show up this time if things go badly."

She may not have known who the man was, but I remembered.

Grandpa had been saved twice now by this mysterious Snake Handler.

I hoped we wouldn't need him a third time; the ole guy would have to be over a hundred.

The two of us sat silently for a while, just listening to the crickets as we put our thoughts in order.

"I will go," Glimmer said, getting up and dusting herself off, "tomorrow will be a long day, and I will need my rest."

"I'll walk you," I said, getting up to follow, but she put a hand on my chest to stop me.

"I know the way, handsome. You will need your sleep for tomorrow as well. Go, get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow night."

She turned to go, but when she turned back, I had little chance to do anything but stand there like an idiot. Her lips were rough, her teeth like polished stones as they pressed behind them, and when she pulled back, I wished she hadn't. She smiled at me, impish and whip-fast, and then she was off the porch and into the woods like a startled deer.

I was powerless to do much else but stand in shocked delight as the night breathed around me like a crouching animal before a leap.